“[In film noir] the fiction passes from minor familial squabble to an unexpected slaughterhouse, from pastoral romance to cataclysm, or from a commonplace inquiry to an inexplicable mystery. The gap between the two movements is an asyndeton: a rupture in the chain of significations where the spectator feels as if they has somehow skipped a necessary logical step. The bridge between the two movements has escaped us; the second (pot au noir; the “pitch-pot”) does not appear to be logically derived from the first (mise en place; the “set-up”). There is instead a disconnection, a gap, where the spectator feels the absence of a necessary structural relation.” - Marc Vernet in Film Noir Reader 2, pg. 65